Even the dog carries her own pack. If you want freedom, you must accept the responsibility to carry your own pack. See what I mean in this week’s edition of “Isn’t That Ironic?”.
I love hiking. Just last week I was hiking in the Rockies with my youngest son and oldest granddaughter. Cora is 10 years old and it was her first backpacking trip in the mountains. That was a special experience for me—three generations of hikers.
Cora didn’t carry much weight. She just had a little day pack with her spare clothes and a little food. Her father carried most of her gear. That’s a metaphor for life, isn’t it? I explained it to her like this.
“Cora, you are embarking on the second decade of life. Your task in this decade is to learn to carry your own pack. By the time this decade ends, you need to be independent. You need to carry your own weight, your own gear, not have someone else carry it for you. You need to learn to find your own way in the world—to travel your own path, your own spiritual path, career path, personal relationships path, financial path. You need to learn to hike all by yourself if necessary, and even to help other hikers you meet on the trail. You’ll be able to hike any trail you want. But you’ll have to be able to do it on your own, and pick yourself up when you fall down.”
You see, that’s what liberty and independence are all about. Many people misunderstand this. Many people mistake liberty for licentiousness. They confuse independence with a disregard for others. The founding fathers of America understood liberty to be freedom with responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without having the other. You cannot lose one without losing the other. That’s exactly what’s happened to us in the Western world. In recent decades, we have willingly given up our responsibilities and are now shocked to find we’ve lost our freedoms.
We were happy to have the government pay all our medical bills—to let the government be responsible for our health. We gave away that responsibility. We were happy to have the government pay us welfare and unemployment insurance rather than taking complete responsibility for our own financial welfare. We gave away that responsibility. We were happy to have the government pay us a pension rather than engaging in productive work as long as we can and providing for our own declining years. We gave away that responsibility. In these and a hundred other ways, we gave away our responsibility. We were happy to see responsibly leave, and our freedom slipped out the door in responsibility’s embrace.
So it’s not surprising, then, that we find ourselves living in a functional dictatorship. We still have the form of democracy, but both our nation and our province are functioning as dictatorships.
On the national level, we went two years without a federal budget. During that time government spending increased by over 100%. Our national debt now exceeds a trillion dollars. On a “per household” basis, this is the same as every household having another mortgage as big as the first one. As an economist and I can assure you, it is impossible to pay this money back. It will never be paid back. The first and most important job of parliament is to control government spending. Parliament is completely ineffective, and the country is being run by the privy council. That’s what happens in a dictatorship, not in a democracy.
In Alberta, with recent legislation, the chief medical officer—an appointed position—now has the power to make laws. That’s dictatorship. This spring, the legislature was postponed, and the cabinet given the power to make laws. That’s dictatorship.
Adolf Hitler did exactly the same thing. He created an “emergency” by burning down the German parliament building in 1932 and blaming the communists. He used that as the excuse to arrest all the communists, cancel their newspapers, outlaw their political party, and confiscate their property. Then, because of the “emergency”, he convinced the parliament to pass the “Enabling Act”, which enabled the cabinet to pass laws during the “emergency”. Since Hitler appointed his cabinet (as does Jason Kenny, as does Justin Trudeau) Germany was effectively a dictatorship from that moment. And, of course, the “emergency” never ended. The German parliament continued to meet for years in a theatre, but it was, appropriately, only for entertainment purposes. The same can be said of the Alberta legislature and the Canadian parliament. They are now for entertainment only. No decisions are actually made there. No effective debate happens there. No MPs or MLAs change their mind or vote differently because of what happens there. All Canadian legislatures have become jokes. We live in a functional dictatorship.
In Canada, the fake “emergency” was a virus that never caused a statistically significant increase in deaths anywhere. Yet all our governments have given themselves emergency powers that have destroyed the last semblance of democracy and turned our country into a functional dictatorship. There is no real public debate or discussion about any new law or policy—illegally locking people in their homes, restricting travel, shutting businesses, closing schools, sports teams, musical groups, public meetings, even family dinners! There was no public debate or discussion about any of this. And none of these measures are supported by scientific evidence.
At the same time, censorship runs rampant. The federal government has now given itself the power to censor even private communications on the internet and social media. All the mainstream media companies have become de facto propaganda outlets for the federal government. It’s like Germany in 1932.
Meanwhile our police, the RCMP, have become like Hitler’s brown shirts—they arrest pastors for preaching, ordinary people for going for a walk or playing in a park, even outstanding Canadians like Maxime Bernier for a peaceful protest, but they stand by and do nothing while vandals destroy public property, tearing down statues at the Manitoba Legislature. This isn’t Canada anymore. The Canada I once knew and loved is gone. In its place is a Marxist dictatorship. We have a functional dictatorship, a national media that is a propaganda outlet, a national police force that enforces, not the laws, but the whims of the dictators.
What Can We Do?
We have a municipal election coming up in a few months. We must remove every single incumbent from public office. All of these people are guilty of malfeasance in public office. All of them are complicit in this fraud, in the mass murder, in the destruction of democracy. Find people to run in your community who see the fraud and tyranny in what has happened. Work to elect people who have the courage to stand up to this tyranny. Demand less from governments, not more. We have enslaved ourselves by giving to governments the responsibilities that are rightly ours alone. We must dismantle the apparatus of oppression. Only by reducing the scope and power of governments can we regain our lost freedom. Only by taking back our responsibility can we take back our freedom. In truth, they are one and the same.
Your future is in your hands. Are you ready to carry your own pack? Are you ready to walk your own path, to make your own trail, to not be led by government, or expect the government to pick you up when you fall, to be there with a Band-Aid when you cut yourself? You will encounter problems in your life—of course.
If you want to regain liberty and democracy, you must accept the responsibilities that come with freedom. Liberty is freedom with responsibility. Liberty is first and foremost, an attribute of the soul. Liberty exists within you, or it doesn’t exist at all. I urge you to find it within yourself, think about its implications, and live liberty in all that you do. I urge you to carry your own pack!
God Bless You!
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